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100% Biker 157

Noon on June 1 was the anniversary of one of the most shameful episodes in recent British history – the Battle of the Beanfield back in 1985.

The Battle, as it’s become known, took place in a field next to Stonehenge when Wiltshire police attacked the Peace Convoy, a rag-tag group of hippies, crusties and those who wanted to live an alternative way of life, methodically smashing the windows of the coaches and buses they lived on, using sledgehammers to destroy the interiors and people’s personal belongings, and beating them with truncheons.

The police initially said that they were provoked by having things thrown at them, but at the subsequent court cases they dropped these allegations and no proof of this has ever come to light. 16 members of the Convoy were taken to hospital with injuries, one suffered a fractured skull, and no less than the Earl of Cardigan, a well respected leading member of the Conservative Party, actually witnessed a pregnant woman being beaten with truncheons, and testified so in court against the police. So many were arrested that there weren’t enough holding cells in the region, and whole families, parents and children, were sent to different police stations, some as far away as the Midlands and the North East.

What has this got to do with us, as bikers? Well, we too live an alternative way of life and we too often regard ourselves as a persecuted minority. We’ve had to suffer the needless meddling of politicians and ill-informed do-gooders over the years, and we’re currently having to suffer it again with the latest EU proposals for anti-tampering and all the other bollocks they’re trying to force upon us.

Now many folk out there don’t choose to see the threats to our lifestyle, so won’t lift a finger to help, not just the rest of us, but themselves too, even scorning those who work on their behalf. Well, that’s their choice of course, but just remember the words of the famous statement about the rise of the Nazi party back in the 1930s:

First they came for the communists,and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.Then they came for the trade unionists,and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews,and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.Then they came for meand there was no one left to speak out for me.

-Nik

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